Coming Soon!

Twelve years ago when I went into my first classroom, my very own classroom, this was impressed upon me by my principal: Bulletin Boards. At no time prior to that moment had any of my brief but arduous teacher training had anyone mentioned this facet of the educational process. Keeping a colorful and lively learning environment seems like a natural thing to attend to, but eventually, not on the very first day in my very first classroom.
That wasn't negotiable. My principal wanted me to have bright new paper up on my bulletin boards with those crinkly little strips of border around the edges. She was my boss. She was the lady who hired me. She was the woman who made it possible for me to begin my career as a teacher. Of course I went to the teacher's lounge where the big rolls of butcher paper were available in a rainbow of hues, and then a few rolls of border. I cut and stapled and fussed and stapled some more until finally I had a room full of yellow and blue, surrounded by green and red waves of crinkly little strips of border. I had plenty of help back then. The assistant to the principal, before we had an assistant principal, gave me all kinds of good advice about how to make a bulletin board jump up and say, "Welcome to my room!"
A dozen years later, I started my day working on my bulletin boards. I picked a color scheme that featured orange and blue. It took me an hour or two to get things just right, but all of a sudden, ti looked like a classroom. As the day wore on, there were plenty of other teachers busying themselves about all the tasks that needed to be done before the first day of school: copies made, nametags written, desks arranged, and a hundred other tiny details. When the smoke cleared, some of our teachers had left without fulfilling their prime directive: They had left their bulletin boards bare. I spent the last hour or two before I came home cutting and stapling and fussing and stapling some more on boards outside other teachers' rooms. School starts on Monday, and my bulletin boards are ready to go. I just hope I will be.